{"id":395922,"date":"2026-01-08T10:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T10:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/395922\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T10:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T10:41:08","slug":"bowen-yang-explains-why-he-left-snl-with-just-2-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/395922\/","title":{"rendered":"Bowen Yang Explains Why He Left \u2018SNL\u2019 With Just 2 Words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bowen Yang<\/a> has finally explained why he bowed out of \u201cSaturday Night Live<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday\u2019s episode of his podcast \u201cLas Culturistas,\u201d <\/a>which he co-hosts with his friend, comedian Matt Rogers, the \u201cWicked\u201d actor got frank about his surprising exit from the long-running sketch show after seven seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is honestly what\u2019s behind it: It\u2019s time,\u201d Yang said a little over five minutes into the episode. \u201cYou would do seven seasons, and then you would scoot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BowenBowen Yang attends the 5th Annual Academy Museum Gala at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Oct. 18, 2025, in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Frazer Harrison via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Yang continued, \u201cCOVID and the current media landscape, the current entertainment ecosystem, is so turbulent that people have completely valid reasons for staying longer. Or, in a lot of cases, don\u2019t have the privilege of staying on as long as they would like to. I have this very beautiful thing where I get to say that I stayed on exactly as long as I wanted to.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he almost left the show earlier, he revealed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was maybe unsure about going back in the summer, and I\u2019m so glad I did,\u201d Yang said, referencing his unorthodox decision to leave halfway through Season 51.<\/p>\n

In his final episode, Bowen got to say goodbye to the show in a meta sketch with Cher and Ariana Grande<\/a>. In the skit, Yang played an airport employee on his last shift \u2014 and it was a much more sincere and bittersweet sketch than the show typically airs.<\/p>\n

\"Yang\u2019sYang\u2019s last goodnight credits on \u201cSNL\u201d in December.<\/p>\n

Yang said on his podcast that initially, the sketch was supposed to be much wackier, with Yang\u2019s eggnog machine spraying people.<\/p>\n

Yang credited creator Lorne Michaels for the more tender tone. Yang recalled Michaels coming up to him before the show and telling him, \u201cI think it\u2019s better if it\u2019s just you guys and you just play into the emotion of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Although the \u201cFire Island\u201d star seems to have left \u201cSNL\u201d on his own \u2014 and good \u2014 terms, other cast members seemingly haven\u2019t been as lucky.<\/p>\n

Ahead of Season 51, several cast members were cut from the show, and it\u2019s unclear if they were fired or quit. Heidi Gardner<\/a>, Ego Nwodim<\/a>, Michael Longfellow<\/a>, Emil Wakim<\/a> and Devon Walker<\/a> left after Season 50 \u2014 and none of them received a send-off like Yang.<\/p>\n

Walker, in particular, didn\u2019t mince his words after it was announced he was leaving \u201cSNL\u201d after three seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell,\u201d Walker said on Instagram<\/a> in August, not saying whether he quit the show or was fired. \u201cWe made the most of what it was, even amidst all of the dysfunction. We made a fucked up lil family.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bowen Yang has finally explained why he bowed out of \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d On Wednesday\u2019s episode of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[28366,49,48,361,75,28371],"class_list":["post-395922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-bowen-yang","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-saturday-night-live"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}